FORSYTH, JOHN HUBBARD (1797–1836). John Hubbard Forsyth, defender of the Alamo, son of Alexander and Mary (Treat) Forsyth, was born at Avon, New York, on August 10, 1797. He was raised on his father's farm in Livingston County, New York. He studied medicine but never practiced. On April 3, 1822, he married Deborah Smith. He left New York in late December 1828 after the death of his wife, leaving his son, Edmund Augustus, with his father's family. Forsyth traveled to Texas from Kentucky in 1835 as the captain of a volunteer company. In Texas he obtained a commission as a captain in the Regular Texan Cavalry and used all of his available cash to outfit and supply his company. Forsyth and his men traveled to the Alamo with Lt. Col. William B. Travis and arrived in San Antonio de Béxar in early February 1836. He died in the battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Daughters of the American Revolution, The Alamo Heroes and Their Revolutionary Ancestors (San Antonio, 1976). Sylvia Van Voast Ferris and Eleanor Sellers Hoppe, Scalpels and Sabers (Austin: Eakin Press, 1985). Bill Groneman, Alamo Defenders (Austin: Eakin, 1990). John H. Jenkins, ed., The Papers of the Texas Revolution, 1835–1836 (10 vols., Austin: Presidial Press, 1973). Pat Ireland Nixon, The Medical Story of Early Texas, 1528–1853 (Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Lupe Memorial Fund, 1946).

Bill Groneman